The Media Role in Corporate Governance Improvement: Lessons from Dual Class Share Unifications Beni Lauterbach and Anete

1. The Media Role in Corporate Governance Improvement: Lessons from Dual Class Share Unifications Beni Lauterbach and Anete Pajuste Bar Ilan University and RTU Riga Business School Presentation at the Sapir HU conference December 18, 2011

2. Dual Class Shares • A considerable proportion of publicly traded firms around the world have a dual class share structure, namely offer low-vote and high-vote shares. • In dual class firms, controlling shareholders concentrate their holdings in the high-vote shares, because it’s the cheapest way to gain control, which creates disproportionality – a gap or wedge between their (high) vote and (lower) equity holdings in the firm. This gap aggravates the controlling shareholder agency problem. • The dual class structure is probably beneficiary at the initial fast-growth stage of firm’s life-cycle. However, as firm matures, agency problems take the front stage. • Bebchuk(1999) claims that gap structures are the worse form of corporate governance and Bennedsen and Nielsen (2010) show that the dual class structure discounts firm market value by 25% on average. 2

3. Dual Class Share Unifications • The unique agency problems of dual class firms can be solved by a dual class share unification: transforming all company shares into a single “one share one vote” class. • Unification is considered a corporate governance improvement because the gap or disproportionality are eliminated and because it typically dilutes the voting power of controlling shareholders. • Israel has basicly “forced” by law dual class share unifications (Lauterbach and Yafeh, 2011). However, more commonly, unifications are voluntary decisions by the firms. • We study the media role in such “voluntary” unifications. Can the media convince firms to unify? Can it impact the magnitude of controlling shareholders’ vote loss upon unification? 3

4. Outline of Results Examining 72 European unifications in 1996-2002, two central findings emerge: • When the press’ anti-dual-class-shares sentiment increases, more companies unify their dual class shares. • The long-run reduction in the voting power of controlling shareholders is larger for unifying firms that are under the media limelight. 4

5. What drives voluntary unifications? • Motivation 1 (Maury and Pajuste, 2011): Reduce the cost of external financing. Dual class structure signals high private benefits and expropriation. This deters simple and institutional investors. After unification access to capital markets becomes easier and cheaper. • Motivation 2 (Bigelli, Mehrotra and Rau, 2011): Sometimes unification is just another trick of controlling shareholders to exploit the public. Before unifications shareholders purchase low-vote shares, so eventually their wealth increases upon unification. 5

6. Our “new” explanation • We propose that unifications are semi-voluntary and also emanate from public opinion and media pressure. • Dyck, Volchkova and Zingales (2008) describe “firm public opinion reputation” as an asset that companies struggle to develop and keep. • If public sentiment turns against dual class structures, firms try to recover their eroded “public image” asset by unifying their dual class shares. More precisely, some controlling shareholders choose to give up the extra private benefits afforded by the dual class structure in return for the extra reputation of single class firms. 6

7. The dual role of the media • Media is an activist reform-demanding agent. From a cynical point of view, “crusades” to restrain “greedy” CEOs and “exploitive” controlling shareholders are a sure readership-booster. Anyway, media campaigns hurt the reputation of firms with “bad corporate governance” and convince them to improve. • Media is a “watch-dog”. Firms that are interesting to the media, media-attended firms, cannot afford violations and cannot reverse corporate governance improvements because those would be reported immediately. 7

8. The role of the media Dyck and Zingales (2004) estimate private benefits of control in 39 countries. After a multivariate analysis they conclude that media pressure and tax enforcement seem to be the dominating factors in restraining private benefits. 8

9. Tests of the “new” explanation • Testable hypothesis 1 - Negative Sentiment: When media sentiment towards dual class shares worsens, the tendency to unify and the rate of unifications increase. • Testable hypothesis 2 – Media Oversight: The higher is media interest in a company, the larger is the vote loss of its controlling shareholders upon unification and in the long-run (seven years after the unification). 9

10. Our Sample: Voluntary Unifications in Europe European Sample description (Maury and Pajuste, 2011) • Total 1996-2002 unifying firms sample 109 • Unifying firm, still listed, no ownership data on crucial dates 7 • Unifying firms delisted 30 • Final sample: Unifying firms, still listed 72 • Total control sample of dual class shares 384 • Dual-class, delisted since 2002 126 • Dual-class, unifying after 2002, still listed 44 • Final control sample: Dual-class, still listed214 10

11. Unifying firms demographics 11

12. Descriptivestatistics 12

13. Voting Power Dilution 13

14. Long-termchangesinrelativevotingpower for 72 unifyingfirms 14

15. Media Coverage and Negative Sentiment 15

16. Increasing media pressure before unifications 16

17. The determinants of firm's choice to unify its dual class shares 17

18. The determinants of firm's choice to unify its dual class shares (2) 18

19. The effect of media oversight on controlling shareholders' vote loss 19

20. The effect of media oversight on controlling shareholders' vote loss (2) 20

21. Factors affecting the long term vote loss of controlling shareholders in unifying firms 21

22. Conclusions • Media and public opinion pressure (negative sentiment) help in convincing firms to improve corporate governance, give up their dual class share structure in our case. • Media continuous coverage and attention to the firm affects the degree of corporate governance improvements, deepens the long-term vote concession of firm controlling shareholders. Media is an effective “watchdog”. 22

23. Message The seventh-power rules! And its impact should be further studied… 23

24. Tobin’s Q Evidence (if time permits) 24

25. Tobin’s Q Evidence (if time permits) 25

26. Thank you 26